Google Street View shows post-tsunami Japan to the world

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Google has updated its Street View feature in Google Maps with a drive up and down the disaster-ravaged areas of northern Japan struck by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

The company took its 360-degree panorama camera cars through 44,000 kilometers (27,340 miles) of the region in the hope of providing useful information to researchers, scientists and historians studying natural disasters. Google has made two enhancements to the Street View product to coincide with the release of the new images.

The first update is timestamps for the Street View images taken. As in the screenshot above, the month and year the image was originally taken can be seen in faint text at the bottom. The feature, according to Google product manager Kei Kawai, is one of the most-requested over several years. Kawai added that historians, architects, city planners and tourism boards among others may get direct help in their work by knowing how fresh an image is. The timestamps are available worldwide now.

The second, and most relevant directly to the disaster, is Build the Memory, a Google Maps API mashup that lets users compare before/after images within the disaster zone. Drag the Street View icon tool to an area, and then use the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ buttons to view the same location at different times. The effect is most pronounced when looking at cities directly along the coastline, such as Natomi, Miyagi Prefecture.

Unfortunately, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor exclusion zone is not covered in either the before or after imagery. Searching for the town of Okuma will get you closest to the zone, but zooming out reveals that the nearest Street View-enabled area, even before the disaster, is an inland highway dozens of miles away.

While the professional appeal of these enhancements is obvious, Kawai invited the merely curious to check out the area. Google’s work, he wrote, ensures that memories of the disaster can be “relevant and tangible” for future generations.